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Posts Tagged ‘Lib Dem sell out’

As a Lib Dem member, and someone who joined the party many years ago because of tuition fees, amongst other issues, which made the Liberal Democrats a truly distinctive choice in British politics, I thought I’d respond to your e-mail.

I fully supported the Lib Dems in 2010 as truly the only genuine alternative to the same old rubbish from the main two parties. So much time and effort committed. When I saw us surging in the polls, only for us to be disappointed on Election Day, it broke my heart.

The choice of our leadership to back the Browne Review turns my stomach. We have done nothing other than sell our policies down the river since we went into government. And all for what: an AV referendum that no one wants?

Yes, I know we didn’t “win” the election, but neither did the Tories. And neither did we have to put our MPs in Cabinet posts which would end up causing the greatest difficulty for our party. Witness again today Chris Huhne issuing yet more screeching u-turns on our policies on nuclear power.

Sorry “Nick”, but if the party is doing nothing other than back solutions which consistently appear to be Tory – the kind of thing David Cameron would have done anyway – then there really is no point in pretending to be a different party any more. Call a special conference to formalise the merger now, and those of us still with a conscience can reform as a genuine centre-left, social democratic party.

I don’t buy any of this rubbish that the Coalition are spinning: “it’s worse than we thought”.

Frankly, it can’t possibly be worse than they thought, considering the budget deficit is smaller than Labour had predicted, by almost £20bn compared to Labour’s first estimate.

Meanwhile, inflation is stubbornly high. Inflation, disastrous in large quantities, but very helpful in the short term it stays above target. And hiking up VAT is only going to add more to inflation. A crafty way to inflate away the debt, perhaps? All on the Q. T. – you understand.

No. “Worse than we thought” is spin, pure and simple. It’s a way to say “Not me guv!” all the while delivering the ideological love for cuts that is becoming apparent.

So if we ignore this spin, what other explanations could stand up?

The current Lib Dem line, which is being used as an excuse to tear up the manifesto, and make us a total laughing stock considering we stuck it to the Tories thusly, is that the “crisis” in Europe has made us reverse our whole economic doctrine. Yes, Vince Cable really has gone from centre-left neo-Keynesian to Thatcherite neo-liberalism. Or maybe it was just the Bank of England that persuaded him.

Never mind the voters. Never mind everything you told them, promised them and went all round the country trying to convince them of. Never mind your own principles either. There are others, after all.

It just doesn’t stack up to me. Look at the kind of thing Vince Cable was writing last year. And yes, events have changed. But after going through the most turbulent period in our economy’s history since the 1920s and 30s, can anyone claim with a straight face, like Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg do, that the last month in Europe has been even more dramatic that we’ve had to change almost everything we stood for?

It is an insult to people’s intelligence to pretend otherwise. Government has meant we’ve had to close down major chunks of our manifesto, which have been sold out to ensure the coalition’s agenda.

It’s grist to the mill of the opposition, naturally. After all, haven’t they been crowing since the dawn of time that you “cannot trust the Liberals/Lib Dems”? Say one thing in opposition, do another in power. We’ve only gone and proved it.

There was no mandate for a VAT rise. Everyone said they weren’t planning one. The Lib Dems even tried to make political capital out of it. Now, tainted by this decision, we will never hear the end of it.